The fans are primed because the energy level of Mr. Colbert’s television show is soaring. “The Colbert Report” — with a title that’s eponymous, the way Mr. Colbert prefers everything — currently beams with irrational exuberance. The show is sharp and innovative in ways that could have followed it to the coffee table, but that hasn’t happened. The full-monty Colbert television brilliance doesn’t quite make it to the page.
“I Am America (And So Can You!)” certainly has its moments. (“You Can’t Hurry Love — but you can certainly take the shortcut. Instead of paging through Match.com, try flipping through the family photo album.”) They expand upon the Colbert persona, that of a self-loving loudmouth perched on the famous fine line between stupid and clever. The book is divided into chapters on big topics (“The Family,” “Religion,” “The Media,” “Race”) and stresses the exclusive Colbert pedigree of its thoughts on each of them. “You won’t find these opinions in any textbook,” he says, “unless it happens to be one I’ve defaced.”
“America (the Book),” the “Daily Show” spinoff that is the prototype for “I Am America,” was also the collective effort of television staff writers trying to replicate their on-the-air style. But it was neither inspired by nor tethered to a single stellar character. That gave it room to maneuver through a wide range of subjects, as well as a gleeful, anything-goes spirit of adventure. The narrower “I Am America” sticks to ravings suitable for a mock Colbert memoir and further limits its range by avoiding explicit talk of government or politics — though it culminates in a reprint of Mr. Colbert’s blistering political speech delivered at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“I Am America” describes “heroes” as “people who did not skip ahead” to that speech “but read the book from start to finish as intended.” Heroism aside, to experience the speech in print is to understand what “I Am America” is missing.
Mr. Colbert and his staff write for a particular character with impeccable, deadpan delivery, and there is no book-worthy equivalent of what happens when the real McCoy gets near a microphone. The printed speech falls surprisingly flat. Neither this chapter nor the rest of “I Am America” is helped by little red annotations in the margins, though these, too, mimic a tactic that happens to be funny on TV.
Still, the sharp-elbowed Mr. Colbert will deservedly work his way toward the top of best-seller lists, no matter what he has to do to current competitors like Alan Greenspan, Ann Coulter, Oprah Winfrey, Eric Clapton or Mother Teresa. His book may not replicate a winning formula, but it’s certainly a valentine to his proven success. Its tone is typically dictatorial (this, to him, means a person whose book is dictated), as when it warns readers that “no image of me should ever be removed from this book for any purpose, including, but not exclusively: book reports, decorating walls, or placing in your wallet to imply our friendship.” Not for nothing does this book’s reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man feature Colbert eyeglasses and enlarged testicles as bonus features.
Among the funnier sections is the “Higher Education” chapter. It includes what purports to be Mr. Colbert’s college application essay, featuring ripe malapropisms, overuse of a thesaurus (“the apex, pinnacle, acme, vertex, and zenith of my life’s experience”) and the lying claim that his great-great-uncle’s name is on a building at Dartmouth. There are also fake course selections with student annotations, among them “Ethnic Stereotypes and the Humor of Cruelty” (“A professor will tell you a bunch of hilarious jokes, and you’re not allowed to laugh”) and “Dance for Men.” (“Go ahead. Break your mother’s heart.”) Heterosexuality that protests too much is a big part of the official Colbert attitude.
A glossary on science is another high point. (On cloning: “No free labor source is worth all of this trouble.”) And it well suits Mr. Colbert’s opposition to all forms of progress. (The smallpox vaccine “may have saved a few thousand lives, but it also destroyed the magic amulet industry.”)
The “Sex and Dating” chapter also heavily emphasizes science, since Mr. Colbert is in some ways the Tom Lehrer of his day. Mr. Lehrer’s sharp satire and erudite academic stunts, like his classic musical rendition of the Periodic Table, are forerunners of Mr. Colbert’s subversive whiz-kid humor. “I often think back fondly on the memories I haven’t repressed,” the book says in this sneaky spirit.
When it refers to the American family as “a Mom married to a Pop and raising 2.3 rambunctious scamps” or to a cat named Professor Snugglepuss, “I Am America” gets lazy. The same goes for a sophomoric crack about why books are scary: “You can’t spell ‘Book’ without ‘Boo!’” And this book is capable of better witticism than: “Now I’m not the smartest knife in the spoon.” But it doesn’t take the smartest knife in the spoon to understand the point of this undertaking. If “I Am America (And So Can You!)” had nothing but its title, its Colbert cover portrait and 230 blank pages instead of printed ones, it would make a cherished keepsake just the same.
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